Cider Experiments w/ Brett, ECY20 and Bottle Dregs

[bizoneill]

This weekend is my local home brew clubs annual cider pressing and I'll be there once again but this time I plan on getting 15 gallons of cider and splitting it out into 3 different fermentation's.

1st - Will be an all brett fermentation. I'll be using Brettanomyces bruxellensis Trois Vrai, Brettanomyces Clausenii and Brettanomyces bruxellensis.

2nd - Will be fermented with East Coast Yeast ECY20 BugCounty.

3rd - Will be my biggest question mark that I plan to ferment with dregs of Sante Adairius Rustic Ales, Saison Bernice.

As I stated these are experiments and I hope to have some great outcomes!

Also please let me know if you have experimented with anything like this in the past all information is helpful and graciously accepted!

Cheers!

 

[pricelessbrewing]

I propagated up some jolly pumpkin dregs and added that to some cider. Should be tasty.

 

[bizoneill]

I just did this yesterday. I ended up with a few experiments. 12.5 Gallons total.

#1 - 4.25 gal of cider with Brettanomyces bruxellensis Trois Vrai, Brettanomyces Clausenii, Brettanomyces bruxellensis and Saccharomyces "bruxellensis" Trois.

#2 - 2.25 gal of cider that I killed off the wild yeasts and will add 5lbs of cherries and not sure what yeast yet. Thinking Nottingham.

#3 - 5 gal of cider with and old ECY20 Bug County. We'll see what happens with this...

#4 - 1 gal left to ferment out with wild yeast and then I'll bend with some fresh cider.

 

[dmtaylor]

Nice. I've run a lot of yeast experiments on my ciders, but only one with Brett. I hope you find a Brett you like, as honestly, I hated the one I did. I'm not sure which exact type of Brett it was either; this was several years ago. Overall my favorites are still Cote des Blancs and US-05. Both make very tasty and appley ciders, with a slight hint of cinnamon spice in the background (no spice is added -- this is from the apples and yeast). Good luck to you.

 

[bizoneill]

Nice. I've run a lot of yeast experiments on my ciders, but only one with Brett. I hope you find a Brett you like, as honestly, I hated the one I did. I'm not sure which exact type of Brett it was either; this was several years ago. Overall my favorites are still Cote des Blancs and US-05. Both make very tasty and appley ciders, with a slight hint of cinnamon spice in the background (no spice is added -- this is from the apples and yeast). Good luck to you.

Thanks! I have only used Nottingham with apple juice before and it came out great. Hope it works with the fresh cider too!

I pitched a blend of bretts because I have had single brett ciders before and they just seem one dimensional so hoping pitching this blend with create something very interesting... We'll see!

 

[dmtaylor]

I have used Nottingham one time. It resulted in a finished cider that was very tasty but had an additional peach flavor which was quite interesting. Try those other two sometime, I can promise you won't be sorry.